Elemental Design has peaked my interest. The prices seam amazing and the quality looks impressive. Does anyone have these or the sub mentioned above?
Elemental Designs' subwoofers - at least in the lower price ranges - do quite well in terms of extension and output, but not so great in terms of tight transient response. They are one side of the compromise that I was talking about. I would put HSU's less expensive subs on the opposite side, where they have nice, tight transient response, but give up just a little bit in terms of the deepest extension and output down there.
It's a similar case with Epik and Rythmik, where Epik's subs tend to hit lower and louder, but with a little bit less control, while Rythmik's subs are as tight and accurate as can be, but don't necessarily hit the lowest notes with the same high output.
Once you get to around $1000, everybody's subs start to sound pretty darn good in almost all areas
eD started as a car audio company, and you can sort of tell by the way their subs sound. They're all about massive output - really tactile "thump, thump, thump" bass that a lot of people love for action movies or dance music. But you do give up something in the way of subtlety and the finer details in music and movies. It's a perfectly reasonable compromise. Different people want different things sometimes!
Personally, I always favor tighter transient response. I like to hear separation and deliniation between notes. I hate it when bass "smears". So I tend to favor Rythmik's subs and HSU's subs and SVSound's Plus and Ultra models. I was disappointed when I got a pair of Epik Sentinel (now discontinued) subs because they had noticeable overhang, where notes did not stop as quickly as the signal was telling them to. For music, it made the bass "smear". And even in movies, it turned things like The Matrix' lobby shootout scene into a bit of a mess as the bass would just rumble and boom instead of having tight, clean articulation.
But even with my disappointment in those particular subs, I could see how other people might really love them! The Epik Sentinel subs hit low and had great attack. I literally heard and felt certain deep bass notes and sounds that just didn't come through with my HSU VTF-3 MK2, which the Sentinels were meant to replace. For people who just wanted to get that really deep bass and chest thumping impact, I think they would love the Epik design choices. But for me, I was used to the HSU's level of delineation and articulate bass. And while the HSU VTF-3 MK2 couldn't match the Epik Sentinels' deep bass output, giving up the quality of the rest of the bass just wasn't something I could tolerate.
